Some people already called him out in the past, fought him, dealt with him and the consequences of his actions. Gathering evidences of his behaviour. Thanks, to all of you, because it made writing this easier.

In the next message, I'll include a full copy of the blog post linked above, so you can read/share it on fedi.

Thank you for spreading the word, and please, please, do not let this person (or anyone like him) in your communities.

> Let's do a test: I'll make a profile claiming to be in one of the groups that Nazis often target, and see how many Nazis actually target me (cause I see the argument "if you're in one of their targeted groups you'd see more of them" but I kind of doubt it).>> <https://linuxrocks.online/@DashEquals/102288955725480797>

So he end up being blocked on fedi by the Funkwhale account for this reason. It could've end up here, but the day later, he asked on Matrix if he was still welcome in the community.

At the time, he was also targeting one of our mods, Ginny, and when put all the pieces together, including some mentioned in that post, we decided we wanted him gone.

I talked to him in private, in an attempt to prevent some unwanted discourse, both for him and for us. Obviously, it was a mistake, because it mainly protected him. I'm deeply sorry about that.

## Why today?

Of course, harassment against Ginny continued after he was kicked, and DashEquals even contacted me today because she was supposedly infringing our Code of Conduct. Read below, I'm speechless:

> Hello,> > I’m not trying to appeal my ban from the Funkwhale project, as it is ultimately your choice whether I’m allowed to be part of it, and I understand that the behavior that I have exhibited could reasonably be considered unacceptable.>> However, I encourage you to check this out: <https://kitty.town/@GinnyMcQueen/102411860344968494>>> I feel like the behavior exhibited there is definitely a violation of the Code of Conduct, in particular:> > Continuing to engage in conversation or inciting users to engage another user in continued interaction or discussion after a user has requested for said engagement to cease may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed.> > (I requested that she stop talking about me here: <https://ap.torlipen.net/notice/9kgTjJF5eJXa7EP2HY>, she mocked my request)> > Intentionally posting or disseminating libel, slander, or other disinformation.>> Claiming I’m “obsessed” with her, I won’t stop harassing women, and that I “lost my absolute shit”>> Thank you for reviewing

What's going on is that DashEquals is trying to make Ginny looks like she's crazy. He's referring to a thread by her, posted yesterday: <https://kitty.town/@GinnyMcQueen/102411860344968494>. He says that, by doing so, she's not respecting his boundaries, blocks, etc.

What's going on is that DashEquals wants to isolate Ginny, and cut her from her friends. At the same time, by posting about her in public, he's making her a target for harassment and worse. This is disgusting.

Ironically, what's going on is that this person, who didn't care about user privacy when archiving berries.space, who can't live knowing someone blocked him, who don't care about nazis being there, now want to be protected from the consequences of his actions.

## So, what now?

This person is never wrong and never apologizes. He won't stop harassing Ginny, he's spreading dangerous ideas, he's acting as an enabler for even more toxic people and behaviours…

Ginny is in danger because of him. I assume this is possibly also the case for other marginalized people.

Telling him to stop didn't work. Kicking him out didn't work.

At this point, the only recourse we have is to cut *him* from his community, friends and networks. This is just damage control, to reduce his impact:If he can't spread his shit, he'll be less harmful.

The only actual way to solve the issue would be for him to do some introspection and change, but I have a feeling this is not going to happen anytime soon.

If you want to help with this, here is a couple of ideas.

Are you working with him? Interacting with him? Following him? Is he a member of your communities?

Then please, confront him. Kick him from your communities if you can, or report him to mods and project managers otherwise. Ensure he's not welcome in your spaces. Report him.

Ensure he's blocked by you or, better, by your instance. This will protect you from him, reduce his visibility and make the fediverse a worse place for him.

Please, do this, and spread the word.

Thanks.

*Oh and, DashEquals, if you read this: don't bother contacting me, or Ginny. We're way past this point. You know what to do, and not to do.*

@brainblasted@eliotberriot@kaniini my point is to shine light on the fact that op starting this thread is in itself toxic behavior and harassment. if he has a problem he should block the person or, even better, dm them criticism first. idk why people tolerate these threads tbh, there are better things op and everyone else can be talking about

because his behaviour has been the topic of the day in several workspaces for weeks now. it is no surprise that eliot had had enough of it.

you assume that people have not been trying to help him to understand why he is pissing people off. i assure you, this is not the case at all. again, his behaviour has been the topic of the day in several channels on matrix and IRC.

let me be very blunt. fediverse devs aren't really into the whole "cancel culture" thing. things have escalated to this point because nothing else was working. if you continue to play with fire after everyone tells you to stop playing with fire, you eventually get burned. that is precisely what has happened here.

he has had interactions with MANY people in the fediverse dev community, and all of us told him the same thing.

the fact that he couldn't let the ginny thing go means that funkwhale had to eventually respond in this way, because their other options were already taken.

we really aren't interested in kicking people off the island for no reason. this has been building for several months now.

@karolat@kaniini@brainblasted@eliotberriotI'm... really uncomfortable with this callout too? looking over this thread it looks like a lot of shit was going on in matrix or irc or otherwise behind closed doors that I wasn't privy to, so: fair. and the guy seemed like he was like a dog with a bone, in a way that's innocent if annoying from outside but very not good if there were other issues behind the scenes. if that was the callout I would be on board.

but most of this callout is not that. it's "he doesn't like blocks, he filters certain words, he 'enables nazis', he advocates assuming good faith, and he regularly boosts certain content (which seems fairly mild to me and which I also liked/boosted iirc)." I am very uncomfortable with using those as grounds to call for cutting someone out of a community--multiple communities. am I gonna get called out now too, bc I agreed with some of what he said? do I have to worry about anna following me around accusing me in unrelated threads of being a nazi who preys on queer children or something, to spread the word of how terrible I am? or getting kicked from my instance, or getting my instance blocked en masse? it seems sometimes like the only place I could even be safe to voice anything I think are the ones that have way too much in common with 4chan, which obv come with their own problems (no offense: that's just very much not my scene).

@hushpiper@karolat@kaniini@eliotberriot maybe this post doesn’t do it justice, but this is not the only situation with this user. He has bothered many PoC, has advocated for Nazis when Tusky went to block Gab, and essentially tried to discredit my efforts to get GIMP renamed. In this instance he was directly abusing someone, and we shouldn’t let abuse slide.

that's honestly the tip of the iceberg. he frequently jumped into shit that didn't concern him and started all sorts of unnecessary "debates" with people who were trying to do work for no reason.

basically, he's a kid who starts shit for attention. and while this isn't particularly unusual behaviour for kids to do, he did so with such frequency and going to such extremes that it was naturally pissing off people.

it's no surprise that he pissed ginny off. ginny is someone who is quite easy to piss off. but here's the thing, when he annoys people, or worse, outright pisses them off, he doesn't quit. which is why *everyone* who talked to him basically kept telling him the same thing: chill the fuck out and take it easy.

i can't control how other people decide to frame the problem. all i can do is tell you what the problem people were having with him is.

I don't want to speak for eliot, but i believe he used this framing to make the point that he was combative in this way, looking to start shit for his own attention and amusement, because that's the core of the problem.

@kaniini@brainblasted@eliotberriot@ice@karolatI hear you, and I'm not blaming you for the way it was presented or worded: you didn't write it. I take your word for it that there were a lot of problems I didn't know about that made a callout necessary.

I just figured I'd speak up about the parts of the callout itself that I'm uncomfortable with. I've seen people very badly hurt by this sort of shit--people who genuinely did not deserve it. and this is a pattern on mastodon. I've seen it on other sites too, and I know that with enough community support for it, it turns into dehumanization and violence. it's not a small nitpick, for me. this is a safety thing.

@karolat@eliotberriot@hushpiper@kaniini PoC have very unique perspectives on things, and sharing them often brings up unique results on here. If there's a pattern of someone targeting marginalized groups, it matters.

@brainblasted@eliotberriot@hushpiper@kaniini nah miss me with that 'my identity makes me more valid than you' nonsense. everyone here has their own unique background and is dealing with things in their lives. the fediverse is an equalizer in this regard

@ice@eliotberriot@karolat I think you’ve misunderstood what “white priviledge” is. Yes you are poor and no doubt have had your own bad experiences with being poor. But there are even more bad experiences you could have had if you were a PoC. There are certain things that you probably have never worried about because you are white. Things that poor black people experience on top of the bad things you’ve experienced.

i'm not particularly enthused about the callout itself, but i understand why things escalated to that point, having interacted with the person in question.

but had he just taken the advice of literally everyone who talked to him, which was to chill out and take things easy, things wouldn't have escalated to this point.

this escalation happened explicitly *because* he was unwilling to let certain beefs with people go. at some point, if someone who is in charge of a community tells you to leave them the fuck alone, you should just leave them the fuck alone.

@brainblasted Shit like this is why I'm developing my "I need to know you're a real human who won't just delete their anonymous accounts and try again like this is 4chan and you're trying to roll a triple. @eliotberriot

also, if y'all could tell your piece of shit rabbit friend in this thread to stop gaslighting this whole thing, stop harassing me (they know i have reciepts) and stop pretending they and dansup arent buddies with Dashequals and posturing that they were "trying to tell him" while simultaneously being assholes, that'd be cool

@brainblasted@eliotberriot i just really hope y'all are smart enough to see how that rabbit is using the situation with both positioning them and their friends as the reasonable ones (obvious lies) while simultaneously gaslighting the whole thing using language like dashequals was "pissing people off" and not directly stalking and harassing women for months. Like, it's suuuuper obvious.